This set proclaims itself on the internet as the
“only complete recording of all the works written by Debussy for
piano duet and piano four hands”. It is most certainly that. Most
discs of Debussy works for two pianists extend to no more than one CD,
including usually the Petite Suite, En blanc et noir, Lindaraja,
the Six epigraphes antiques and the Marche ecossaise,
sometimes varying the diet slightly with one or another of Debussy’s
earlier works or transcriptions. This set extends to three very full
CDs, and when I first opened the box my initial impression was that
we would have a considerable number of transcriptions by other hands.
Not a bit of it; all the music on these discs was indeed written by
Debussy for two pianists or arranged by him for that combination, sometimes
with the intention of expanding the works at a later date for full orchestra,
sometimes not. There are some real rarities here.

The pianists, both extremely good technicians, sometimes rush the music
rather too much for my taste especially in the transcriptions of works
like the opening movement of La mer for piano duet. One could
contend that the piano, with its limited sustaining capacity, requires
that the music be taken at a faster pace. I would treat this argument
sceptically; the use of the piano sustaining pedal, and the listener’s
memories of the orchestral score, would well survive a slower treatment
of the score, as indeed we are given with the transcription of the Prélude
à l’après-midi d’un faune. However what
would have helped even more would be a more resonant acoustic. A photograph
of the two pianists in the booklet show them placed side by side on
two pianos which seems to push them back against the walls of what one
presumes is the recording studio. The sound would seem to confirm this
suspicion, since there is almost no resonance such as one would expect
in a concert hall, just the sense of two pianists and their instruments
in a very confined space. The sound does not overload or become clangourous,
but it does feel very cramped indeed.

The real value of this set lies not in the orchestral transcriptions
but in the early rarities included on the first one-and-a-half discs
- the works are presented, logically, in chronological order. The set
begins with Debussy’s early attempt at a Symphony, written
for Tchaikovsky’s patroness Nadezhda von Meck. I reviewed
an orchestral arrangement of this score by Tony Finno issued last year
as part of Jun Märkl’s box of the complete Debussy orchestral
music; that performance was over a minute slower, but the music - which
sounds only intermittently like mature Debussy - works well at the speed
here, even though once again the sound of the piano duet is somewhat
too closely observed. Märkl’s performance gave us only the
opening Allegro of the symphony. The performance here confirms
my suspicions voiced in my original review that it was Finno’s
orchestration which was responsible for some of the vulgarities I detected
in the score. Here we also have the charming Andante cantabile
which may have been intended as the second movement of the incomplete
work.

One movement of the ballet score Le triomphe de Bacchus was also
included in the Märkl box, but here we have considerably more of
the music - another eight minutes including some inconsequential fragments.
All this serves only to confirm my earlier observations that here we
find Debussy almost imitating Delibes, although the later fragments
show more signs of individuality. Before this we have heard the overture
to Diane about which we are given no information whatsoever;
it was written for an unfinished scène lyrique, and was
only discovered nearly a century after its composition. It is a jolly
piece, but has no discernible evidence of the mature composer.

The first disc concludes with a brief Intermezzo and the Première
Suite d’orchestre, about which again the booklet notes are
silent. Both were originally intended for orchestra, but if complete
orchestral scores ever existed they are lost. The Intermezzo
was inspired by a poem by Heine, in particular the lines “The
mysterious isle of the spirits showed faintly in the moonlight; exquisite
sounds reached the ear and dancing shapes floated mistily. The music
grew ever sweeter, the whirling dance more alluring…” I
quote here from Caroline Waight’s translation in the booklet notes
for the Naxos release of the same music. It is again a rather Delibes-like
and forthright piece, with only occasional touches of mature Debussy
in evidence; and it doesn’t sound in the least “mysterious”
in this performance.

The Première Suite was only discovered as recently as
2008, and derives in part from Debussy’s incidental music for
Chansons de Bilitis; not to be confused with the song settings
of the same title. It has been recorded a number of times, but a completion
of the orchestration of the pieces might give us a better idea of the
music as the composer originally conceived it. Apparently an incomplete
full score of the Suite does exist, but is missing the third
movement; in this form it has been recorded by Les Siècles under
the enterprising François-Xavier Roth, although I have not heard
this. Again one is indebted for this information to the notes for the
Naxos recording - this time by Gérard Hugon. One wishes that
Marco Rapetti’s notes for this release had been more similarly
informative. The opening movement, entitled Fête, inhabits
much the same world as the later Suite bergamasque; and the slow
waltz Rêve which constitutes the third movement begins
like a close cousin of Satie’s Je te veux written some
eighteen years later, developing into a grand climax which anticipates
Neptune’s chariot in Respighi’s Fountains of Rome.

The works on the second CD are generally more familiar, although usually
in their orchestral guises provided by Debussy himself or his contemporaries
like Henri Büsser. However the Divertissement which opens
the disc is also a comparative rarity. Here we begin to glimpse the
mature Debussy in a work which anticipates the Tarantelle styrienne
in its infectious rhythms. This is in fact the longest single track
on these three CDs, and its inclusion is welcome.

The three brief dances extracted from L’enfant prodigue
finally introduce us to the composer’s mature genius in its first
flowering. They work well in the piano duo format with the hieratic
Prélude being particularly beautiful in this arrangement.
Printemps was a work that Debussy wrote during his stay in Italy
following his success in the Prix de Rome, and it exists in a number
of different forms. The piano duet version is skilful; but the following
Petite Suite, the first really mature work in this set, suffers
from the closeness of the piano recording with the Cortêge
and the final Ballet in particular sounding decidedly strident
and over-loud. Both the Marche écossaise and the Prélude
à l’après-midi d’un faune suffer less
from this, but the works really sound far better in their orchestral
guise. The opening of the Marche, so atmospheric in the orchestral
version, sounds much too ‘present’ and ‘precise’
in this recording. The impressionist haze in the central section of
the Prélude is rather too literally displayed.

The final disc includes, besides the transcriptions of La mer
and the Danses sacrées et profanes, Debussy’s three
major works for piano duo in the form of Lindaraja, the Six
épigraphes antiques and his masterpiece in the form En
blanc et noir. These three works have received many excellent performances
over the years, and one has to confess that they too would sound much
better in the more realistic perspective of the concert hall. Both Massimiliano
Damerini and Marco Rapetti are excellent players, but the closely observed
sound to which their performance is subjected seriously robs the music
of atmosphere. I managed to obtain a more acceptable sound by the use
of various tone controls, but one would really have hoped that the notes
would have been given more room to breathe.

Although there is much value in having all Debussy’s works for
two pianists in one comprehensive box, there are alternative versions
of most of these pieces available on various Naxos discs - not much
more expensively. It must be admitted that the recorded acoustic on
those CDs is more resonant and less congested than the sound here. The
Naxos discs also come with much more informative and extensive booklet
notes, which are of great value in investigating the extreme rarities
such as the Suite and the Symphony. However for Debussy
completists this issue is self-recommending.
Paul Corfield Godfrey